Perspective
by Lazy Tortoise
Summary: Several connected short stories about the Enterprise, and how she means something completely different to each member of the crew.
1. Opportunity

**A/N: A series of short stories about how the Enterprise means completely different things to each of the crew members. They will vary a bit in style and length. The first is one of the more rambling ones, as the PoV person is marinated in alcohol for most of the story. Constructive criticism is more than welcome.**

**Star Trek is not mine, and I do not intend to profit from it or step on anyone's toes as far as copyright is concerned. If, however, Paramount ever decides to swap the copyrights for a large stash of cheap tea, I'd like an E-mail.**

Opportunity

He's halfway through his fourth glass of whiskey when he realizes he likes this altogether too much. He's finished his fifth when he realizes he doesn't give a damn. The sixth lasts a while, as he wonders whether half full or half empty would be more positive in his particular situation. Jocelyn, were she there, would make the issue a lot simpler - she'd simply pronounce it too much damn alcohol. She might have a point, he thinks as he empties the glass. And that alone is testament to how drunk he is - he's certain that admitting Jocelyn could be right about anything goes against his very nature

He'd bickered with her from the day they met - first, edgy, interesting quarrels laced with tension. Then, over time the arguments got older and cut deeper, and the tension and excitement disappeared so that all there was left was thick, bone-deep exhaustion. The occasional lulls between the storms only made things worse. He isn't drinking to drown out the yelling and slamming doors, after all. If he's to never see his wife - _ex-_wife - again, he wants to remember those. Another good reason to leave this whole damn mess behind.

When he finally passes out, the floor feels soft and inviting.

The next morning, he wakes up with the mother of all hangovers, and jabs a detox hypospray into his own neck with relish. Then he walks out of his hotel room and heads straight for the nearest bar. He discovers that whiskey doesn't taste so good with the medicines still buzzing around his system. There is a woman at the end of the bar with a nasty scar across one cheek, and when she turns to the bartender to order another drink, he can see that it extends up over the bridge of her nose and into her hairline. For a moment his fingers itch for a closer look - whoever patched her up can't have done a very good job of it - then he realizes that her hair is sort of auburn. It's a double punch to the gut, because auburn is Jocelyn's hair color, and that hurts almost as much as the realization that even though it isn't her hair color, really, almost auburn is close enough to trigger a flood of half forgotten sensations and phrases.

Even though hyposprays with whiskey for dessert is enough to make a man want to phaser his tongue permanently numb, Leonard still manages to get wasted before lunch. He can't quite seem to find his hotel, although he was almost completely sure where he placed it, and since it's a nice day he just settles down in the park he's discovered instead. There is a wooden bench that seems nicely stable in a fuzzy and tilting world. He knows he's somewhere near Atlanta, still in Georgia, so the blurry conversations around him shouldn't be in another language. He feels like they are, though. He doesn't grasp anything being said. Instead of listening, he focuses on watching.

A man walks by, and he has a slight limp. Maybe a strained muscle, maybe it's to do with his bones - osteoporia... osteporo... something. Maybe it's cancer. Leonard suppresses the urge to kick himself. Was he always this morbid a drunk? Watch the pretty ladies in the sunlight instead of looking for disease, he tells himself. So, to take his mind off things, he plays a game with himself. Every person he sees, he connects with something that isn't deadly. Or Jocelyn.

First is a young girl with a kite, and he lets that one slide because it hits too close to home.

Next is a man, with a full, black beard and bushy eyebrows, and he thinks he might just leave his stubble to its own devices for a while, because the man looks so fierce and funny. Also, Jocelyn hates stubble. Leonard awards himself a penalty for breaking his own rules.

A couple of girls, belly on the grass, sucking up the summer sun, and he's back in the apple orchard behind his house, crunching on a ripe fruit, eyes on the sky. A woman with a dog walks by, and he doesn't want to leave his mental orchard, so he just adds his old labrador to the setting, scratching him behind the ears as he settles down beside him. He can almost feel the earth beneath him, warm and dry against his back.

Then another man walks by, he rubs his arm irritably, and the orchard is gone. Instead he's in the hospital, treating his first patient as a _doctor, _a real one. He runs the dermal regenerator across the cut on the man's arm, watching as it seals itself. He's happy. As the man walks out the door, he catches a glimpse of a woman in the waiting room with long auburn hair and green eyes, and she returns his smile. There's Jocelyn again, in his practice, digging her way into his life with easy smiles and easier banter. There's the dead labrador, the way she helped him bury him in the apple orchard. There's the way the apples tasted on her lips, mixed with saliva and something sweet, something he can't find anywhere else. There is the way Jocelyn and his little daughter, his baby, sit in the grass, digging for worms and pirate's gold.

Apparently, he only needs to want out of the park badly enough to be able to find his hotel. It isn't enough, however, he realizes when he gets back. He needs to get out of fucking Georgia, because everything in Georgia is only a car ride from home. So he folds up everything, and goes off. To Iowa, he thinks, though it could be Alaska for all he cares. '_It's dead, Leonard,' _he tells himself. '_Now you get over yourself and start over.'_

It only takes a few days in Iowa, with all the auburn-haired Iowan women, to discover that Iowa isn't far enough away, not even close. This discovery is cemented the day he goes through his suitcase for a clean shirt, and instead finds himself fishing out the unsigned divorce papers at the bottom. They are still in their envelope. Across the front of the envelope is written in messy, sprawling letters: '_Mail these back to me. If you come within a hundred mile radius of Joanna, I know where Sheriff Jarrow keeps his phaser.'_

Jocelyn always did know him too well.

The envelope is soaked in his alcohol of the week and burned in the grimy bathtub of his hotel room. The papers lie on his bedside table for another few days, gathering dust. Gradually, Leonard begins to think about the future. He knows better than to include Jocelyn, though she continues to crop up with alarming frequency. Mostly, he thinks about somehow circumventing Jarrow's phaser and going south with Joanna and his medkit. Because if Jocelyn is in every woman he sees, Joanna is simply everywhere: playing in the trees, dangling her legs over the side of a wall, laughing as she runs across the grass.Joanna belongs in Georgia, though. He knows he can't take her away, much as he wants to.

Finally, he's had too much. He wakes up with his head on the bathroom tiles one time too many, and fills out the divorce papers in a half-drunk stupor. Then he takes a cab to the nearest shuttleport and enlists. He hates space. Honestly, truly does - the thought of being stuck in a glorified tin can suspended in emptiness makes him want to punch something. But right now, he's fucked earth up too badly to want to stay there with the memories - there is no grass in space.

Besides, he really, really wants to be off-planet once Jocelyn discovers the elaborate string of insults he added to the margins of the divorce papers.

Starfleet academy isn't half as bad as he suspected it'd be. As a trained doctor, he has very few classes - mostly some weird variant of epidemiology that's been tailored to fit starships and xenobiology. Alien diseases that attack the human body are already part of the ordinary med school curriculum, but alien diseases that only attack aliens is something new. In his spare time, he volunteers at the naval hospital. He's been given a room for himself because of his seniority, but he's only been living there for a week when his friend from the recruitment shuttle commandeers his couch.

"You don't mind, do you?" asks Jim Kirk as he tosses his bags unceremoniously into the corner. "My old roommate kicked me out, and I need somewhere to crash."

Three years later, they are still sharing a room, and if Jim is aware how much it helps Leonard to have someone to look after, he never mentions it. Somewhere between hyposprays, whiskey, grousing over Jim's complete lack of a self-preservation instinct, doctoring, classes, more grousing, and more hyposprays, he manages to laugh, and plan for the future.

When he is assigned to the Enterprise, he brings Jim along without a second thought. He's the only family he has left.

He was right about space, though, he decides. Darkness, and danger - more than he possibly imagined. Part of him is still stuck in an orchard in Georgia, longing for a future he can't have. But there is so much more than that: a crew that relies on him, a baby brother of a captain, and a ton of new responsibilities. No-one ever calls him Leonard anymore. Jim, after one ill-timed comment about his bones being all left to him, now refuses to call him anything else.

Bones finishes his glass of whiskey, the one he allows himself after a long day, and glances at the replicated apple on his desk. Maybe he'll go back for Joanna someday, and he can show her how much things have changed. Then the sickbay doors slide open, and a limp, figure in a gold tunic is carried through them by a security officer and a stony-faced vulcan. Jim is breathing heavily, and there is a large red stain blossoming beneath his ribcage.

"Bones!" he says, his grin somewhat strained. "Tell Spock I'm alright, will you? He's been bitching at me since we beamed back and -"

Spock carefully lowers Jim onto a bed. "I do not _bitch, _Captain. Ignoring Starfleet protocol to beam down with the landing party is illogical and hazardous-"

"Dammit, Jim," Bones mutters under his breath, and fishes out his tricorder.


	2. Love

**A/N: Set a few months after the movie ends. Which I do not own. **

Love

If the head of the U.S.S. Enterprise is the bridge, then the heart is deep within its bowels, nestled amongst the rumbling engines and tangled pipelines. It's a few degrees warmer down there than anywhere else on the ship (except perhaps Spock's quarters) and between the pulsing machines and occasional grime, it's a wonderfully organic and living place. Below decks is a kingdom unto itself, and Scotty finds it a far more interesting realm than Captain Kirk's. Oh, sure, the Captain's word is law - but he'll listen to Scotty, and take his advice, on everything concerning the mechanics of the ship. As far as Scotty is concerned, the fact that most of the above-decks crew rarely ventures into the depths of the ship is a wonderful thing.

Occasionally, Spock will fall passionately in love with some part of the mechanism and sit for hours on end and study something like the warp drive, before departing to conduct research elsewhere on the ship. Kirk will come down sometimes as well, to bury himself in a maintenance tube with a screwdriver. He'll emerge hours later, covered in sweat and oil, usually in a better mood than he went in. Scotty's noticed that these visits usually coincide with particularly dull ambassadors visiting the Enterprise.

But those two are the rare exception, not the rule, and understandably, he's quite surprised the day he discovers Lieutenant Uhura curled between two warp drives, fast asleep.

She's got her PADD in one hand, her back against the casing of one engine, and her hair is escaping from her customary ponytail in a decidedly un-Uhura-like fashion. Scotty watches her for a few moments, and then fetches a blanket to drape over her sleeping form. She doesn't even stir. He watches her for a few moments, perplexed, then leaves her in peace. Fetching the required tools for the task in an adjacent storeroom, he descends a level to have a look at the inertial dampeners.

The Enterprise is a perfect example of Starfleet engineering, but all that means is that she's as perfect as Starfleet is. Scotty likes to improve her where he sees fit. Who knows when being just a little faster will mean the difference between survival and becoming space dust? It seems a shame to hold the Enterprise back from reaching her full potential. The cooling system seems a perfect example of these inherent flaws; large pipes full of water snake past the inertial dampeners, each liter rising a few degrees in temperature as it passes, carrying the excess heat off to warm the rest of the ship. The dampeners aren't always in use, however, and precious energy is occasionally expended to keep the ship at a comfortable temperature. Not the engine room, however. It's always sweltering, always far warmer than anywhere else, because even though it's the twenty-fourth century, humanity still can't build an eternity machine. Energy is always lost through friction, though heat and noise. The engines of the Enterprise are the best there are, all but soundless, but they aren't perfect.

Scotty rolls up his shirt sleeves as he tries to reroute some of the water pipes through the outer shell off the engine casing. It's grimy and tense work - he knows first-hand just how strong the water pressure is within the pipes. He turns the water off in the pipe by sections, careful to always leave it a big enough outlet that the force of the held-back water doesn't cause the pipe to rupture. More and more of the outer engine casing comes off, and he begins stacking the large plates in the corner. The edges bites into his fingers as he moves them, leaving shallow red grooves. He should probably put gloves on, but he can't help but feel that doing so would impair his abilities somehow. Thick gloves make him feel clumsy. He likes the way the starship shapes itself under his touch.

Then he begins building the fine veins of pipe that run crisscrossing across the inner peel of the engines. It was shaped more like a net, well ordered and symmetrical in his mind, but as he works it gradually becomes more organic. He's so absorbed in his work, he doesn't notice Uhura has snuck up on him, until she takes his spare omnidriver out of the toolbox, and begins tightening the bolts in the pipe he's just fastened.

"I knew y'would come around eventually," Scotty says eventually. "Everybody wants to be in engineering. We won't even have to find you a new uniform."

Uhura doesn't answer, just continues to twist the bolts with a vengeance.

"This is great, y'know, you can help me explain to Keenser why we don't use the Jefferies tubes to build little hideouts in. I swear, he's set up a lair somewhere in there, and no-one can get through that thick skull of his to explain why that isn't good." Uhura still isn't answering, and Scotty thickens his accent a bit for effect. "Yea. No nests in th'Jefferies tubes. Tis' one of th'many rules ye've got to ken if ye'wannae explore th'deepest secrets o'the Enterprise_."_ He punctuates this remark with a very serious expression.

The corner of Uhura's mouth twitches - she sets down the omnidriver and crosses her arms. "Alright, I'll bite. I can't sleep in the Jefferies tubes. What are the other rules?"

"No working while drunk. No drinking while sober. No-one but Enterprise crew goes down here. Don't bet with money you don't have. Any monkey can twist wires like the manual says to twist them. No telling the Captain about the moonshine we aren't making. Nothing's perfect. And my personal favorite - you can hide from your problems down here, but not for more than one shift in a row."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever want to join," Uhura says serenely.

Scotty shrugs. "You're helping now, aren't you? That qualifies you for basic whiskey rations at least. Welcome t'engineering."

"It's just for the one shift. Don't get used to it." She focuses on the pipes again, carefully tacking them together. Scotty can see she's watching his hands for guidance, and slows down a bit so she can catch the gist of his technique. She's a fast learner, and she's obviously used an omnidriver before - Scotty isn't quite sure why this surprises him. No one learns over ten languages and God knows how many dialects by being slow on the uptake.

Between them, they make good time, and when Uhura finally steps back, the entire engine is covered in what looks like a fine-masked net of veins, branching out around the organ inside, protecting it, feeding into and away from it. Scotty grins, and slaps Uhura on the back, leaving behind a black, greasy stain. He feels slightly guilty for all of five seconds, before she leaves a retaliatory handprint on his own shoulder.

"Right," she says, cracking her delicate fingers. "Lets get the plates back in place, and try this out."

"Are you sure you don't want permanent placement down here?"

"It's too hot. I got enough of hot growing up."

Scotty waves dismissively. "That's ne'er a good enough reason for not taking the best sort of job on the ship."

She smiles wryly. "Actually, Bones and I both receive a sizable bonus from Starfleet for babysitting the Captain. I can't keep an eye on him from down here."

"Ha, very ha," says Scotty, handing her his toolbox. "Hold this." He manages to wrestle one of the plates over to cover up the engine, and begins fastening it. "Look - oof, you can just chain him to a handrail and - hand me the wrench - he won't get into trouble. If you spilt the profits, I'll lend you my handcuffs." The panel snaps into place, and Uhura helps him with the next one, wincing at the sharp edges.

"I don't think I want to know about the handcuffs." She informs him. "Besides, wouldn't he find out about the nonexistent moonshine down here, then?"

"Oh. Yeah. Well, that's our plan scuppered. Toss that switch?"

Scotty notices the faint tensing of her muscles as she reroutes the coolant water to run its new course. The pipes are thin, but the sheer amount of them should mean that the pressure is dispersed evenly. They shouldn't burst. Uhura stares at the engine as though she's waiting for the plates to come hurtling off at any second, carried on a tidal wave of water and shoddy construction work. He gives it a few additional seconds, then brushes off his hands.

"Great work," he says. "I'll do the other three tomorrow. Would you like a nice glass of defying regulations?"

"Wait - that's it? It just... works? What does it do?"

"If you do it right, engineering isn't always dramatic. You should see our failures, though." He whistles, leading her back up the ladder to the storage rooms and warp drives. The blanket he left for her is neatly folded on the floor. He motions towards it, then disappears into a closet for a few moments. When he returns, his toolbox has been swapped for a suspiciously unmarked bottle of some clear liquid. They sit with their back to a warp drive. Scotty takes a long swig of the bottle and passes it to her.

"So, what does it do?" she repeats, gesturing to the engines below.

"What does it _do? _It takes the excess heat from the engines and channels it into the ship's general heating system. I'm thinking of modifying it, though. Usually, the inertial dampeners can get the ship toasty enough on their own. So, maybe this water could be used for hot showers or something, when we don't need it for that." Scotty shrugs. "We could boil eggs. Bit o' eggs and tea's never amiss."

"We've got replicators for that." Uhura points out, mimicking his nonchalant way of drinking. She gets maybe a soupspoon's worth of moonshine down before she's coughing and spluttering. "What the _hell?"_

"'Tis medicinal," he says defensively, and tries to pry the bottle from her fingers. She moves out of of reach, and takes a more cautious mouthful.

"No kidding. This has a higher alcohol percent than Bones' cleaning ethanol. I could go blind."The prospect doesn't seem to bother her, and she tucks her legs below her chin. After a while, she passes back the bottle. "You know," she says, "maybe you could reroute some of the excess heat to Commander Spock's quarters. He really hates being cold. I think he misses Vulcan a lot."

"Right. Commander Spock's quarters. I thought you didn't like things too war-"

"Just do it." She says, a little too quickly. Scotty stares at her, surprised, and she reluctantly adds, "I have my own quarters."

Wordlessly, Scotty hands her the bottle, trying not to think about how Uhura has practically been living with Spock for the past month.

"Thanks," she says.

"Maybe I could wire the cryotanks up to Spock's room instead."

Uhura shoots him a glance, then puts the bottle down with a bit more force than necessary.

"So, uh -" he casts his mind about for another subject. "Those Rigellian ambassadors, huh?" Silence. "I hear Sulu brough' back another orchid, only t'wasn't an orchid, and Chekov broke into hives when it tried t'strangle him with its tentacles." Uhura's still quiet, and he has a horrible suspicion that she might be crying. Instantly, he feels five times smaller than usual, and infinitely clumsy. "Look, lass, I didn't mean ta -"

_Fucking bloody accent, _he thinks as he pats her awkwardly on the back. Then: _What the hell do I say?_

Uhura got her face hidden against her knees. She's not shaking or anything, and Scotty fervently hopes that she's just really, really tired. Usually, he's pretty good at comforting people - some of the younger ensigns seem to regard his moonshine as a cure-all for everything from homesickness to heartbreak. Uhura's different, though - Uhura, as far as he's concerned, never, ever cries. She's Spock, but nicer and more empathic. And while that shouldn't matter_, _he tells himself, somehow it does, and he can't come up with anything to say at all.

His tongue still hasn't managed to unglue itself from the roof of his mouth when Uhura finally looks up, rubbing tiredly at her face, and the awkward silence seems almost tangible. Scotty wants to tell her that the Commander is an idiot who apparently knows bugger-all about women, but he isn't sure how to phrase it in a less insulting manner.

In the end, it's Uhura who breaks the silence. "You're in love with the Enterprise, aren't you? Must be pretty easy."

He can tell she's not exactly at the top of her conversational game, either.

"I am _not _in love with the Enterprise."

"Oh. Well, I guess that would be sort of silly, anyway." She reaches for more alcohol, but this time, he's quick enough to snatch it away from her. He sighs, and deposits the bottle on his other side. "It was just a rumor. Pass me back the bottle," Uhura demands. "Pass me the bottle back? _Guhsh_ grammar. Give."

"When you've had enough to not keep your languages separate, you've had enough," he says reasonably. "And you can tell whoever says I'm _in love_ with the Enterprise that she's a beautiful, beautiful lady, but I know it could never work."

"Right. A lovely lady. You're not infatuated at all."

He shrugs. "But it's true. She's lovely. Intricate as a puzzle, sculpted, elegant, and yet she manages the insane conditions the Captain keeps forcing her into. She keeps us all alive and safe." _You're babbling, _he brain interjects. The moonshine in his blood keeps talking.

"Look-" he says, fumbling for the right words. "I'm a decent sort of person. The Captain's a flirt and a immature git at times -" Uhura makes a stifled noise somewhere between a sniffle and a laugh. "Spock's a wee bit tense. Bones drinks. Maybe sometimes I get slightly maudlin, despite my natural decency. But aboard this grand lady -" he pats the walkway below him affectionately "-well, we're all amazin', aren't we? Great big heroes and all that stuff."

"I find it very hard to believe that you're ever maudlin. As long as there is food you're always ridiculously happy, optimistic and tough to understand." She's got that haughty, cheerful look about her again, the attitude that's tough and bright and completely Uhura, and Scotty almost sights in relief. He's so used to her alternatively mothering and being ruthlessly efficient with the bridge crew, he really doesn't recognize her any other way.

"Ye luv me accent, lassie, and it's no use denyin' it." He mock salutes her with the bottle.

"Bullshit," she informs him, swiping the moonshine out of his hand as she gets to her feet. He pretends not to notice that her eyes are red-rimmed. "Anyway, my one shift is up. Babysitting duty calls."

"Stash away the you-know-what first."

She rolls her eyes. "The Captain already knows about the nonexistent stuff. This is _James Kirk _we're talking about, here. He can smell booze from a mile away." She puts the bottle back in its place anyway, and as she's climbing up to the higher decks, Scotty can't resist but shout after her;

"'Ey! Lass!"

She doesn't say anything, but pauses mid-ladder.

"You can hide down here for as many shifts as you'd like, if you want to."

Then, she flashes him a smile, and Scotty reassesses _exactly _how much booze he's had.

"Thank you, oh paradigm of decency." She releases the rung with one hand to wave vaguely about the room. "You know, you don't really need to be down here all the time, either."

"I like being a great big hero. It's cozy."

Uhura pauses for a moment. "Mm. Well, I can't say for sure, but even without your lady, I think you would be."


	3. Adventure

**A/N: I do not own. Also, thank you to everyone who has reviewed. It's really, really nice of you, and I appreciate it. :)**

Adventure

Unbeknownst to Spock, the person with the greatest empathy for his highly logical upbringing is the Enterprise's pilot. Sulu, being a bright kid with a knack for quick thinking, had announced to his parents at the ripe age of five that he was going to be a botanist. His parents, despairing at their hyperactive whirlwind of a child, who would drag all manners of odd sprouts and seeds (and on one very memorable occasion, a small tree) into the cramped apartment, saw this as a God sent opportunity.

Over the next four years, Sulu found himself enrolled in all manners of extra lessons - math, biology, xenobotany - and without really ever noticing it, the muddy kid with the sprouts and the smile had vanished completely. By the time he was nine, he could list every flower on Andoria by name or purpose, and he'd completely forgotten why he wanted to know.

He started to develop headaches, and fell behind on his homework. Then, on his tenth birthday, Sulu simply gave up.

He piled his books neatly onto a corner of his desk, and left. He put his back to the city and just began walking. The road would itself through a small forest, which he passed through quickly. He was about two kilometers into the fields beyond when it began to rain. Not altogether sure what he wanted, but certain that it did not involve turning back, he pressed on. Before long, his black hair was plastered to his forehead, and his clothes were soaked through. His teeth were chattering from the freezing downpour, and his feet made strange sloshing sounds in his shoes every time he took a step. Remembering his biology lessons, he began to jog, rubbing at his arms to increase circulation. It was almost winter, and nightfall would come quickly, but if he was lucky the storm would clear and he might get an hour or so of daylight. Maybe the sun could dry out his clothes.

Five hours later, he was on the edge of exhaustion. It was completely dark, and the rain had not let up one bit. Sulu felt like his legs were on fire - he'd never run that long or that far in his life, and his wet clothes seemed to weigh a ton. The fields still stretched endlessly around him, and although he could make out a mountain range in the horizon, there seemed to be no cities nearby. Breathing heavily, he flopped to the ground, and glanced back the way he'd come. He had no money, no provisions, and no illusions that this flight would be anything more than temporary: even if the climate had been ideal, he couldn't simply leave his family and disappear. But he didn't want to go back, either. His life was predictable and easy - he worked, and slept, and learned.

Sitting in the rain, he felt wonderfully impulsive. Oh, sure, his clothes were soaked through with mud, and he felt alternatively burning hot and freezing cold, but he was on an _adventure_ - the first one in forever, and if it wasn't exactly panning out as planned, it was only because he had no plans at all. The grass brushed at his palms, and he picked a blade and held it up for examination. It was thin and grey in the dark. Tentatively, Sulu cupped his hands around it and blew. It made no sound, and he carefully adjusted the positions of his hands and lips. After a few tries, it emitted a high-pitched whistle. Delighted, Sulu burst out laughing.

He was still laughing when he curled up upon the ground, completely exhausted, and didn't stop until he was fast asleep.

His dreams were an odd fevered blur - at first it was just the cold, and dark figures talking over his head, then it was a low rumbling, hands lifting him, and the endless sky above being shut out by something tight fitting over his head. Warmth stole through him, and he felt movement, quick and erratic, and instinctively knew that he wasn't touching the ground. Birds wings fell out of his biology textbooks and came to life between his hands, carrying him away from the dark and the mud, towards the stars.

When he came to, he blinked. Everything was white, and for a moment he was back in the sky, wondering if this was what a cloud looked like from the inside. Then the room solidified, and he was lying on his back staring at a whitewashed hospital ceiling. His mother was by his bedside, her mouth twitching between annoyance and immense relief.

"Pneumonia," she said, "silly child. You got pneumonia. The officer had to bring you back on his hoverbike." Then she burst out crying, and Sulu knew everything was going to be alright. He gave her a tentative smile, and she cried even harder.

"Don't ever, _ever, _do that again, Hikaru Sulu." She admonished. "You nearly gave your father a heart attack."

Sulu doubted that - his father was tough as steel, and practically immortal; at least in his eyes. He promised his mother he wouldn't do that again without any qualms, though: he'd think of something completely different for his next adventure. Something cleverer and more interesting. He'd like to fly again.

When his father came by later that day, Sulu was propped against his pillow with his nose in a book.

"I heard your mother already talked to you," he said by way of introduction.

Sulu nodded, shoving the book unto the pile next to him. For once, the books were all fictional - he'd begun a text on the wind-borne spores of various moons, but he couldn't bring himself to finish. He avoided his father's glance, trying to look like the essence of guilt. To his surprise, his father didn't push the issue. Instead he picked up the discarded book, turning it over and over in his hands.

"Dumas," he says at length. "I liked Alexandre Dumas when I was younger. This is a classic novel."

Sulu nods some more, eagerly. "The nurse said so, too. I thought maybe I should read it. You know, for education. To learn about the past."

His father gave him a crooked smile, and it struck Sulu that his father liked the book too - and that they both knew that it being a good book had very little to do with history and everything to do with honor, excitement and adventure.

"Indeed, education." His father left the book on his bedspread, and walked to the door. "You need some sleep, Hikaru. You had your mother worried for a while." He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Don't go around getting too many ideas from that book. Rapiers are too thin and light. Perhaps a katana would be more suitable to your tastes."

And then he was gone, and Sulu could never quite decide whether he'd imagined that last comment. All he knows is that when he leaves home for Starfleet academy, he has the ghost of his father's handclap on his back, his mother's hug around his shoulders, and an old katana in a black sports bag.

The bag is lost sometime over the following years, but the katana stays with him, finally finding a home on a shelf in his quarters on the U.S.S Enterprise. Next to his katana, he keeps a pale orange cactus - perhaps the last of it's species - from Vulcan, a paperback version of 'The Art of War' - a birthday present from Chekov - and a battered, old copy of 'The Three Musketeers'. He hasn't told anyone, and never will, but lodged between its pages is a pencil sketch of the U.S.S Enterprise, complete with enormous, feathered wings, drawn with painstaking accuracy. Underneath is written in japanese characters:

_Adventure._


	4. Wonder

**A/N: I do not own Star Trek, and do not intend to profit from this fic in any material, culinary, monetary, geological or metaphysical sense. Since I'm not getting any legal rights or minor continental plates out of this (yet!), the reviews I've gotten are doubly appreciated, and I'm working very hard at figuring out how to e-mail hugs. **

Wonder

When Chekov was four, he was absolutely convinced that the Northern Lights were magic. When he is eighteen, after his first three glasses of legally drunk vodka, he informs Captain Kirk of this fact.

"Oh," says Kirk, and pours him another glass. "I hope they are. That would be fants... fantsat... awesome. Don't tell Spock, though. He can take the magic out of anything. He's like some sort of... anti-wizard. Budem zdorovy." Kirk inclines his own glass towards Chekov's, then drains it. Chekov wonders idly how Kirk can manage to botch a relatively simple word like _fantastic, _yet still manages to pronounce '_zdorovy'_ in a manner that's understandable if you listen really hard.

"I'll tell Hikaru," Chekov informs Kirk. "He likes that sort of stuff. It is like that story, you know?" He pauses, making an effort to get the pronunciation right. "Ze... The boy with the beanstalk? Hikaru would buy magic beans. Maybe he will get me beans for my birthday next year, da?"

Kirk nods very solemnly. "Yes. Abs.. Absolutely. Magic beans. Don't mention that one to Spock, either." The Captain stares pensively at his empty glass, as though he can't quite remember how it got that way.

To Chekov's left is Sulu, his upper half draped artlessly across the table. He's snoring softly, and there is a smear of cake across one cheekbone. The rest of the cake - Chekov's birthday cake - is perched at the end of the table. There isn't much left, but then again, it is late, and though there are only three people left around the table, they started out being quite many. The bridge crew, Bones and Scotty, Kzyrry, Morris and Márquez from engineering, and Davies from Science.

The world seems more than a little fuzzy at the edges, and Chekov privately thinks that being drunk isn't quite what it's cracked up to be. It's nice floating around in a consequence-blind haze, but the part of him that remembers having been drunk before keeps reminding him that he'll have a murderous headache tomorrow. The vodka's good though, so he pours himself another glass. Kirk flashes him a mock salute, and mumbles something inaudible.

In the end, the headache isn't half as vicious as it has a right to be. Chekov doesn't chance opening his eyes, though, or even moving, for fear of galvanizing it into action. Instead, he takes stock of his body, running his consciousness along his muscles and skin from the tip of his feet to his scalp. He's flat on his back on something hard, presumably a floor. There is a sore spot on his thigh, where he banged it into the corner of a table, and another one on his shoulder he can't remember how he got. He's wearing a T-shirt, and he's cold. His mouth tastes like toothpaste, stale cake and something bitter and unpleasant. His tongue feels slightly furry. Despite all this, he feels oddly - good. Happy. He's not on his bed, though. He can't remember much. Where is he?

Carefully, nervously, he cracks open an eye. Space, deep and black, stretches out directly above him. Instantly, he's upright and awake, instinctual panic flooding through his veins. _Fuck! I'm falling, I'm - _Then he realizes he's still got a floor, and gravity. He's on the observation deck, not tumbling unchecked through the universe. The room is vacant. He tucks his bare feet up under him, so he is sitting cross-legged on the floor, and tries to think. Outside, the stars seem fixed in place. Speed, distance and relativity. He could calculate it, if he wanted to. How did he get there? He was talking to the Captain, and then - nothing. A big, black hole in his memory. He ought to get back to his cabin, where he can mull it over in peace.

Other questions appear as he makes his way through the ship. Subordinate questions to the big one - _what happened?. _He tries to sort them by relevance. '_What time is it?' _doesn't matter much, since he hasn't got any shifts today, anyway, and he can tell by the faint buzz of alcohol still in his veins that he definitely hasn't been out for more than twenty-four hours. More worryingly, there is '_where are my shoes?', _and _'why does my shoulder hurt?'_

He's feeling dizzy, so he ducks into a bathroom, shoving the door shut behind him with his uninjured shoulder. He drinks water straight from the tap, and cups his hands to collect some more to splash his face with. As he waits for the water to run a bit warmer, he looks at himself in the mirror. For someone who's an adult, finally, he still looks surprisingly child-like - curly blonde hair and wide blue eyes. The universe had a ironic streak a mile wide to make him look perpetually twelve, and at the same time gift him with a mind that was better developed at twelve than most people at forty's. Honestly, he'd felt like an adult since childhood, and practically ancient since he'd been given responsibilities to match his mental age after the Narada debacle.

Those are his first thoughts upon staring into the mirror. The second thought is; I'm going to kill Hikaru. Clearly printed across his forehead in what looks like waterproof marker is a row of squiggly japanese characters.

"He was drunk," Chekov tells himself firmly. "You probably asked the idiot to put it there yourself. You're eighteen, which means you can w...vote, drink, go bungee-jumping, get tattooed, and generally do stupid things without parental consent." His eyes grew even wider as he contemplates himself, horrified. Then he begins rubbing frantically at his face with his palm. "It's marker, it's obviously just marker, pleasegodletitbemarker."

The characters don't go away, but they smudge the surrounding skin a faint gray, and he assumes the ink has set too deeply in the skin to rub it off. He exhales in relief. It's not permanent. It should be gone before his next bridge shift. He hopes. Grimacing, he resigns himself to studying the marks more closely. His japanese is terrible, mainly limited to shouted one-liners from Hikaru's action-holovids. He's promised himself that that's going to be the next language he learns, mainly because Hikaru loves it, and he's never tried learning an asian language before. He can't deny the characters' complexity, either, though he'd much prefer if they weren't so damn... wonky. Or conspicuously placed. The one furthest to the right is even more smudged than the rest, rubbed out of shape across his temple.

It doesn't look good.

Staring at his newly adorned forehead, fragments of last night begin coming back to him. There's a blurry vision of Hikaru at an awkward angle above him, trying to hold his head still and simultaneously draw on him with an intensely concentrated expression on his face. The smudge's different. It doesn't fit into that memory, nor the one after it, where Hikaru's fallen asleep in a tightly curled ball on the foot of his bed, waterproof marker grasped protectively in his hand.

He's forgotten something, and it's important.

"I'm never drinking again," he tells himself. "This is just stupid." Then he splashes some water in his face, and starts back along the hallway.

He's halfway to the observation deck before he realized he's going in the wrong direction. Maybe he left his shirt up there. Was he wearing it yesterday? He's forgotten something up there, and he needs to get it before going to Bones for cleaning ethanol for his forehead. The dizziness hasn't gone away with the water, and he can't recall ever being this disoriented before. He ought to go look for his shirt. Or maybe it wasn't a shirt. Something comforting, anyhow - a blanket, or a pillow, or a cup of coffee...

The observation deck is as empty as he left it, and it feels strangely anti-climactic. There ought to be more. Chekov watches the stars beyond the windows for a few moments. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a distant whirling galaxy, coloring the blackness of space in shades of red and blue. The stars don't wink and falter like they do on earth, partially obscured by the atmosphere. Instead, they burn almost supernaturally bright, lending a depth and intensity to the vast ocean of nothingness surrounding them. Almost without realizing, Chekov settles cross-legged on the floor to watch.

The odd compulsion that brought him back to the deck is tugging at his thoughts from beyond the drunken haze of yesterday, and instinctively he reaches a hand up to his temple. Even without looking, he knows that the tip of his index finger almost matches the smear in Hikaru's tattoo. Almost, but not quite. "_Magic,_" Chekov mutters to himself, and his lost memory supplies the rest of the sentence.

"_Magic," Chekov informs the person next to him with drunken certainty, "does not exist. Is wery sad. Ze Keptin and Hikaru have only ordinary beans."_

_Commander Spock adjusts the telelens he has fixed on the galaxy, and responds distractedly. "Perhaps the situation will seem less dire once the psychological effects of the alcohol in your blood wears off, Ensign."_

"_I am sorry. I am disturbing. I will sit and watch for northern lights a bit, and then I will go sleep, _da_?" Without waiting for a reply, he plops ungracefully to the floor next to Spock's equipment and equations. He can take a hint. He'll just sit and watch the pretty colors in the sky, and leave the physics to the sober._

"_Is nice. Like spiral firework," He informs Spock after a minute or so, and then tilts his head slightly. "Or Romulan Ale going down drain. Swish, blue."_

_Spock looks down at him, and Chekov gets the impression he is weighing the pros and cons of physically dragging him from the room. He scoots backward a little, away from the stony Commander, and tries to think inconspicuous thoughts. _

"_There are no northern lights in space." Spock tells him. "Aside from the fact that traditional navigational headings such as 'north' are inapplicable outside the earth's magnetic field, the phenomenon itself is caused by excess energy being exuded from oxygen and nitrogen atoms, these being elevated to an exited state by the channeling of solar wind particles along the Earth's magnetic field lines. Therefore, this phenomenon cannot possibly be encountered in space, and your presence on the observation deck is without purpose. Also, someone appears to have written a primitive earth insult on your forehead."_

_He turns his back on Chekov, and Chekov wonders if the Commander always states the obvious, and he just hasn't noticed until now because he was too busy being in awe of him. _

"_I know zat," he says indignantly. "Ze bit with ze lights. I knew zat since I was four. But what is ze purpose of space if there is no mystery? Everything is so... predictable. 'Is all science', they say and I agree, and so I leave, I go to space for my magic beans." He's illustrating his point with enthusiastic gestures, trying to get his point across with a rapidly shrinking vocabulary and a thickening accent. "And even in space, there is just math." _

_Anxiously, Chekov watches Spock's back. If Spock doesn't understand this, he is certain no-one does. And even though he isn't completely sure of where his newfound desire to have _someone _understand has sprung from, from the intensity of it, it might as well have been there for years._

"_Is wery sad." He clarifies. "Ze Keptin thinks we have no imagination, no wonder, because we see ze math."_

_Spock gives what sounds suspiciously like a soft sigh, and then crouches down to face Chekov. "The Captain is a highly intelligent and capable individual, who nonetheless persists in maintaining illogical, preconceived notions pertaining to the characters of those surrounding him." For a moment, Spock watches Chekov carefully, then seems to come to a decision. "Perhaps, if you would refrain from mentioning this to him, I might be able to provide you with evidence to support this claim."_

_Chekov nods eagerly, and suddenly, softly, Spock's fingertips are brushing against the side of his face, and the Commander's muttering something under his breath. Chekov wants to shift away from the cold hand on his forehead, but he can't move a muscle, and for a moment everything stands still in a perfectly crystallized moment._

_Then his body is gone._

_He's still on the observation deck, but it's off. Smaller. He's grown, he thinks, but then he looks down at his blue shirt and elegant hands, and realizes he hasn't grown at all. He's Spock. Oddly, he's not panicking. Waves of calm are rushing over him, telling him, don't worry, if the meld is too much, I will break it. It is superficial only, the conveyance of a memory of mine. I just wished for you to see..._

_He understands perfectly, and it's fine. He's not drunk anymore, but more than that, the world is twice as clear as usual. _

_Look, says the voice in his head, look at the universe. Look at the lights._

_He looks. And for the first time in his life, he also _sees_. _

_It's like someone has suddenly added an extra dimension. The distant blue mist is all but glowing with potential. Through the telelens he can make out odd little details, like the small circle of stars on the tip of one arm, locked together by gravity in a tight cluster. The odds of something like that occurring are astronomical - the curious shape, the exact measure of gravitational pull to make it possible... It's gorgeous in a way he's never appreciated before, physics as art. The curve of the galaxy's arms hides equations and unlikely worlds, and somehow it's only made better by the fact that he understands it all, that he knows the how's and the why's of how it came to be._

_It's magic and science, wonder and perception all together, and there are thousands upon thousands of galaxies out there, stretching from one end of infinity to the other. Nebulas, black holes, supernovas, and other, weirder things that aren't in the books because they are still waiting to be discovered. Waiting to be named, and seen, and understood. _

_He stands there for a long while, watching space through the glass of Spock's memory. _

_Finally, he senses a sharp tug and a brief blackness, and then he's back in his own muddled brain, vodka running on an unbridled rampage through his system. He blinks once, owlishly._

"_I believe the correct human expression would be 'Happy birthday'," says Spock._

_Chekov stares blankly at him._

"_Ensign?"_

_Then, Chekov's eyes abruptly focus, and it's like he's only just realized Spock is there. "Commander! Zat was fantastic! Zis woyage is brilliant! Did you see how ze light reflected off ze wapours and-"_

_With a regretful sigh, Spock reaches forward and nerve pinches Chekov._


	5. Purpose

**A/N: I do not own Uhura, or Star Trek, and do not intend to profit from this story. Only Kirk and Spock left to go now :)**

Purpose

"He escuchado que los Vulcanos no sienten nada." The man in the bar leans forward a little, and Uhura can smell the sour beer on his breath. "Puede ser que eso es porque nunca han vistos una chica como tú."

_Leaning, body language - pick up line. He escuchado, I have heard; the lady who sold me that jacket said the same. Vulcanos, lo siento, I feel it, sorry, the Vulcans feel nothing. Porque, why? Because. Visto, from the Latin videre, to see, and me. And nunca. That's never. How terrifically unoriginal. _

Uhura rolls her eyes and takes another sip from her drink. It's fruit juice, and it's good. A beer would be better, but as long as she's looking for a job, she can't afford to drink alcohol. Besides, she's only been in Spain for a few days, and her spanish is still a sad patch-job of english, french and a little latin. She needs her wits about her just to get the point across without pantomime.

Beside her, the burly man is all but lying across the bar, trying to attract the bartender's attention. "Una cerveza más para mí, y una para la dama." He gives her a wink that is a major effort, with half his facial muscles conspiring to make him look like a complete idiot just so he can shut that eyelid.

"No gracias," she tells him firmly. "Estoy acá para trabajar. Vehículos." _I don't want beer, I want a job. How do I say 'I fix rides for money, and if you try anything, I have a knife hidden in my boot?'._

There is a pregnant silence while the man thinks that comment through. In the background, a jukebox is playing something lively, electric and old, and together with the oak counter and pink fluorescent lighting, it makes it fairly clear that the patron really, really wishes he was born a century or two earlier. Jukeboxes these days are hard to come by. Most mechanics can jury-rig one from scratch in a few days, it's the original music is hard to find. It's a nice bar. Clean, and almost empty, as it's only around six.

Uhura glances around the room, trying to discern whether any of the people present look like they are going anywhere interesting. She's getting good at guessing, too - it's a long way from Kenya, taking lifts in return for jobs fixing things. She's got a backpack at her feet filled with tools, a water bottle, some cans of food and a map, but she's off the edges of that map, and it's not like she's going anywhere particular, anyway. Just north, away from the heat and the dust.

"Podés trabajar sobre mí vehiculo," the burly Transporter says, putting a hand on her thigh. _You can work on my vehicle. Yeah, right. _

She brushes off his hand. "No hablo Español."

"No te estaría pagando para hablar, nena."

She squirms away, moving to the other end of the bar with a contemptuous glance over her shoulder. The bartender, who is replacing the bottles on the shelf behind the counter, raises an eyebrow.

"You speak English, yes? Is he bothering you?" His accent is sharp and british, with a faint growl to the r's.

"No." She crosses her legs, going back to her juice.

The bartender walks over to her and leans nonchalantly on the counter. He's shaved his head almost completely bald, and the pink light on his sunburned skin makes him look oddly alien. "You fix machines? Hoverbike, car? I'd pay you good money to come round back and fix my bike."

Calmly, Uhura reaches down to fish the knife out of her boot. In the space of a blink, she's angled it in her hand, and jabbed the point deep into the counter next to the bartender's hand. "I don't fix metaphorical bikes," she informs him. "If you have more clever ways to say penis, I'm taking my business elsewhere. Otherwise, please leave me alone."

It only takes a quick tug for him to dislodge the knife, and he hands it back to her by the hilt. As she takes it, she meets his eyes. They're a dark coffee-colored brown, vivid and shrewd. "My mom was english. I know what bike means. When I hit on a woman, I I'll tell her that she's beautiful, or buy her drinks. I do not appreciate being threatened for a friendly offer. Your knife skills are very sad, though, so I will make the offer again: I have a hoverbike out back that will not start. If you fix it, I will give you money."

Uhura looks at him, considering. Going with him might be spectacularly stupid, but it's not like she's spoiled for choice. He seems on the level, and if not, she's got her knife and a homemade taser. She could probably take him if it came down to that - she's only nineteen, but she's already taller than most guys, and has a bit of muscle. She slides off the barstool, hoisting her pack onto her shoulder.

"A quick look," she says. "And you pay half up front once I've assessed the damage."

The bartender leads her through to a small kitchen with a small replicator and a shelf full of different beer mugs. There is another man - presumably the bartender's brother, as they share the same hawk's beak-nose - sitting at a table eating what looks like fish and rice.

"Cuida la tienda para mí, si?" says her guide.

The brother nods, giving her a saucy grin and a thumbs up, and the bartender swats at him affectionately as they pass.

Outside is a small fenced in patch of garden. The dusty ground shines through the withered grass in large patches, and even several orange trees can't provide enough shade to keep the warm evening sun out of their eyes. In the distance, the hills are painted red in the sunset. Along the brick wall of the building three hoverbikes are parked, looking like they've been around since the advent of that particular type of vehicle. Uhura takes the elastic band out of her ponytail and re-ties it to control the strands that have managed to escape.

She nods towards the bikes. "Which one is it?"

"The one on the far left. It stopped running about three days ago."

Kneeling before it, Uhura carefully excavates the finer wiring of the engine from within the shell of mud and grime that hides it. Some of the cables that divert power from the engine to the rear thrusts are torn and frayed, and the subsequent faulty distribution of power has caused the main and auxiliary thrusts to burn out. Uhura arranges her face into an extremely concerned expression, and takes her time checking the cables she knows are fine as well as the broken ones.

"You're going to need new wires," she finally says. "Two of these here thick ones, and several of the finer ones, the blue ones. I can fix the burnt out thrusts for you, and make it easy for you to hook up the new wiring once you buy it, but it might take a while."

"How much do you estimate that's going to cost me?"

"Ten credits for the wire. You can get some pretty good stuff dirt cheap on the secondhand markets. Sixty credits for the mechanic, and that includes her keeping her mouth shut about the illegally doctored engine the bike has."

The bartender raises one eyebrow. "Oh, so _you're_ here legally, then? Wow, I didn't even think you'd have a tourist visa, but there you go-"

"Fifty-five credits. I'm a _very _good engineer."

"Fifty, your name, and I'll get you some supper."

"Deal." Uhura offers him a greasy hand, and he shakes it solemnly. "Uhura."

"I'm Jorge," he tells her. "I'll get your money and some food, then."

Once he's gone, Uhura pulls her heavy cotton coat out of her pack and folds it into a pillow, placing it under the hoverbike. She methodically lays out the tools she'll need, and then lies down beneath the bike to get a closer look at the inner workings. On an impulse, she pats down her pants to check that her taser is still in her pocket. Jorge seems nice enough, and she's a fair judge of character, but it's better to be on the safe side.

By the time Jorge comes back, this time with a covered plate, a canteen and a electric lamp, she's dismantled all of the thrusters and reassembled three. Darkness is falling fast and heavy, and she's grateful for the extra light. Jorge tosses her a small bag of credits, pulls an upturned beer crate out from the wall and settles on it to watch her work.

"Brought you flatbread and scallops," he says. "You don't want to try Marcos' fish. How is the bike?"

"Rapidly improving." She peers inside he bag, re-ties it, and stuffs it into one of her pant pockets. "Pass me the canteen, please."

She cautiously smells the water inside before gulping down about a third of it. It's sweet and delicious, and she can feel the coolness of it all the way into her stomach. Wiping her hands on a rag cloth from her bag, she digs into the bread with enthusiasm. To be honest, she can see why Jorge is a bartender and not a restaurateur - it tastes like a cross between charcoal and oatmeal - but it's solid and hearty food.

Jorge's gotten a beer for himself, and he uncaps it and leans back against the wall, regarding her through lazy, half-closed eyes. "Where did you learn to repair things?" he asks eventually.

She gestures pointedly at her full mouth.

He laughs. "Alright. I'll respect your manners."

Uhura chews slowly, taking her time. "My father fixes cars," she finally says. "I learned a bit helping out. I probably could have learned more, but it never really interested me. Too... hot. Dusty."

"United States of Africa?"

She nods.

"So now you're going north to somewhere cold and muddy." Jorge raises his beer bottle in a vague gesture towards the horizon. "To the icy plains of Siberia, where everyone will contract mechanics who hate their job."

Idly, she brushes back a rebellious stand of hair. "That's the plan. Russian is a curious language. Maybe I can pick up the scandinavian language group on the way as well."

"That's ambitious. Your spanish is awful, and you're already learning icelandic. Focus on the engines, grease-girl." Jorge's tone is teasing and arrogant, and he resembles nothing so much as a large cat, stretched out and content in it's own superiority. "Tell me, then, Uhura, why'd you leave home for dangerous work, no plan, and only a dream of the cold to keep you going? It seems remarkably stupid, if you want my opinion."

"I'm fine without your opinion. Don't care, either way."

"Well, you can't just blow me off like that. I'm subtly working my way towards asking you whether you have a boyfriend. You see, now you're supposed to tell me a bit about your family, and then I say; 'but surely, someone as lovely as you must have broken a few hearts when you left', and then you giggle and blush-" He looks at her pensively. "-well, maybe you don't blush. Anyway, you decide I'm quite charming and that you'd like to get to know me better. Then, when I ask you out, you say yes. I'll even be a gentleman and offer to let you sleep in the freezer for the night."

Uhura puts down her plate, and props her elbows on her knees. Perseverant. Sooner or later, it always comes down to this - an offer she's not going to take. But he's been nice about it, and she can at least be courteous. "The food was excellent, and I'm sure you're quite the gentleman, but I don't intend to stick around long enough to get to know you better."

"You're missing out. I have a _fine _freezer."

"I don't doubt it." She smiles, surprised at the fact that while his perseverance is not an appealing trait, she does, perhaps, like him in spite of it. The air is getting a little cooler, and there is a breeze blowing through the orange trees. Uhura settles on her stomach, enjoying the retained warmth of the earth, picking a blade of grass apart just to give her hands something to do. The silence is comfortable.

"People from all over would come into my father's shop for repairs." She finally says. "We only had one universal translator, so I would hear half the conversation in French, or Japanese, or whichever language was being spoken. Picking up the patterns was... easy. Natural. One day, one of the customers offered me a job as a translator." She shrugged. "Translators are rare. The universal translators can't get every idiom, but they are a lot cheaper than a human one. I was convinced it was a once in a lifetime offer. My parents were reluctant to let me go. They were sure it was a scam. Turned out they were right. I left the job once I figured out what 'Translator' meant."

There is something like sympathy in Jorge's expression, and she resents it.

"So I'm going to Siberia," Uhura says. "It's not stupid if I can pull it off."

"Why not go home?"

The question hangs unanswered in the air, and she starts in on another blade of grass. _Because I was wrong, _Uhura thinks. _Because I left. Because I can manage on my own. _Out loud, she says; "I've still got one thruster to fix. Thanks for the food."

Jorge kneels to the ground beside her, and wipes a smudge of oil off her cheek with his fingertips. "Uhura. You're taking jobs from men you don't know in backwater bars. You can barely defend yourself. You're probably malnourished, and you don't know what you want. Either go home, or stay here, but don't just continue on like this. It isn't safe."

She bats his hand away, and tries to clamp down on the part of her that wants to curl up and cry, homesick and wishing terribly that she could set down her worries and responsibilities for a while. "I'm fine," she says. "I can handle myself. I don't need help."

He sighs. "At least stay here for the night. There is a guest bedroom upstairs, and you can take a bath once you're done with the bike. Think of it as those extra five credits I negotiated you out of earlier."

"I was expecting to go down to forty. You're way too trusting."

"And you trust too little. It's probably wiser, but it can't be a pleasant way to live."

It isn't, and she knows it, but she'd rather bite off her own tongue than admit it. She's learnt to rely on herself, to excel to survive, and she knows that if she begins to depend upon other people's kindness she'll lose what little she has left - her dignity. Without a purpose, she's learnt to value dignity as a goal unto itself. Getting through the day with her integrity intact is suddenly a challenge, at least if she wants to make a living as well, but she's been brought up to honesty, and her love of languages won't permit her to abuse them for lies and cheap flattery.

So, she doesn't brush him off, doesn't offer him a platitude; 'no, I trust you, I can tell you're a good man', because they'd both know that wasn't true. Instead, she repays him in the only way she can, by being honest.

"I don't have a boyfriend," she tells him. "I've never had one. I'm not sure I want one, either. Giving myself over completely to someone - wouldn't be pleasant. I think I'd always want the distance, the courtesy. There - I've answered your unasked question. Perhaps I can finish my work, now."

For a long moment, he watches her with an unfathomable expression. Then he piles his bottle onto her plate with a chink, and climbs to his legs. "Of course. The guest bedroom is up the stairs next to the kitchen, in case you decide to stay. I'll be working until late. If you need me, just call."

_If you need me. _So much meaning packed into so few words. She could stretch it out if she wanted, rephrase it to be more eloquent, but that might simply water down the sentiment. So she stashes them away at the back of her mind. _What do you need?_

She nods. "Thank you."

"Goodnight, Uhura."

_Nyota, _she thinks. _I'm Nyota. _"Goodnight," she says.

The next morning when she wakes, she finds a piece of paper folded and stuck under the crack of the door. On it is written in loopy, inelegant lettering:

_Uhura - _

_Heard from some engineers that they're building shuttles for Starfleet half an hour's ride away. Thought of you. If you can fix hoverbikes... I'll be up around nine, so make yourself breakfast if you want. -Jorge_

She tears off a strip of paper from the bottom of the note, and fishes an old pen out of her pack.

_Grease-boy, _she begins.

_I'm very grateful. For everything. _

She thinks for a few moments, wondering what goes next, but that is all there is.

_-Nyota. _

Placing the torn-off bit on her pillow, she carefully re-folds the rest of the note and puts it in her pocket. She's gone well before nine.


	6. Belonging

**A/N: I do not own Star Trek. Profiting from this is neither legal, intended or expected. **

**This chapter was a good deal of fun to write - and it completely got away with me. (It's approximately four times longer than the shortest chapter so far. Darn. I didn't mean to be unfair.) It contains vague allusions to TOS K/S - though nothing that couldn't be inferred from canon. Also - one chapter to go (yay Kirk!). It might be a while, since I'll be busy for the next two weeks or so, but it should be finished soon. Thanks to anyone who has stuck with the story so far :)**

Belonging

On the far edge of the Leda nebula, circling a small sun, was a planet. At first glance, it appeared to be covered in rust, since most of the surface was comprised of sprawling orange-red deserts. An extensive mountain range halved the largest of the deserts, the worn peaks protruding from the sand in a bizarre imitation of a spine. The poles of the planet were irregular splotches of green, the only areas to have seasons, as the rest were trapped in an infinite, sweltering summer. There was little water on the surface, though the porous nature of the crust had allowed copious amounts to collect in underground caverns, creating astonishing subterranean seas. When the planet had first been considered for colonization, the caves had been a concern - would the surface of the planet stand for development? Was it stable? Could one walk across the desert calmly, or was there a constant risk of plunging through a sudden hole and finding oneself, much like Alice, in the underworld?

Geological equipment was imported, as well as the scientists to man it. Samples were taken, tests were run, and data compiled. The crust was safe near the poles and along the spine. The deserts were less reliable, though a map was under compilation, and the prospective population of the planet wouldn't be needing to occupy that much territory to begin with. Colonization could begin.

First the buildings - adobe, much of it. Quick, natural and functional. They began carving the stone into libraries, hospitals, and schools. The city wouldn't stand finished for another hundred years, but it hardly seemed to matter. The important thing was that there was still anyone left to carve. There were still some who remembered. The old planet. The one that was lost.

There were good days. The irrigation scheme took. The first harvest was celebrated. A child - the first one wholly of the planet - was born.

There were bad days. A sandstorm took them by surprise, demolishing a full quarter of the adobe houses. One of the elders lost her grip on reality, sucked in by the gaping hole in her mind that thousands of voices and thoughts once had filled. An exploratory team was killed when their equipment malfunctioned and they fell through the desert floor.

The underground ocean they had discovered was named the Masutra t'Bezhun-Masu. Its propinquity to the city and the subsequent discovery of an efficient way to filter the salt from water soon made it integral to the survival of the colony, and the name was shortened to, simply, 'Masu'. Water, liquid.

There was a plateau in the mountains surrounding the city from which one could see the small wells in the distance, bringing up the water, and watch it flow into the fields and pastures. Closer to the mountains, where the foothills provided some shadow, the less hardy of the crops grew alongside houses and roads. If you wanted to get to the plateau, it was a simple matter of following the roads upward until they merged and tapered into a narrow footpath leading towards a pass between two of the mountain peaks. As the path wound ever higher, it grew more difficult to traverse - it was full of rocks almost as large as a human fist, and obviously seldom used.

The plateau itself was half an hour's trek away from the trail, in a bay in the cliffside sheltered from the wind whistling along the mountainsides. It's discovery was a good deal less conspicuous than that of the Masu sea, and its existence was therefore only known to one being in the entire universe. He was of the generous sort, however, and on the fourth day of his first shore leave on the colony of New Vulcan, Commander Spock of the U.S.S. Enterprise found himself setting out on the foot along the footpath with instructions on how to reach the plateau.

"It is a remarkably peaceful place," Ambassador Spock had told his younger self. "I trust you will find it a more than acceptable location to meditate and replenish your mental barriers, should you wish to do so."

As Spock set out on the journey, he had looked upon the meditation as a necessary task, to be undertaken for his own safety, as well as that of those around him. But after five hours beneath the ever-rising sun, laboring upwards across the uneven terrain, he found he was looking forward to it. The thought of water and shade were agreeable, and he had been neglecting his meditation sadly as of late. It was hard to achieve the necessary degree of quiet and internal peace aboard the Enterprise, where the faint stirrings of human life rippled like waves throughout the ship, and every moment an alarm might blare into full-out cacophony.

When the path curved left to circumvent a particularly large boulder, Spock took a sharp right along the edge of a cliff. Progress was considerably slower away from the trail. He had to watch where he placed his feet very carefully, and he kept well away from where the ledge he was currently walking on plunged into an almost vertical drop. He wondered what on earth had possessed his older counterpart to explore this part of the mountains in the first place. According to the Ambassador, he had kept himself busy during the colonization, and Spock could hardly see how wandering aimlessly through remote parts of the mountains would be helpful towards the survival of their race. He hadn't thought to ask when the Ambassador told him of the ledge, and he supposed the question would keep until he got back.

The air was thin at his current altitude, and Spock paused for a moment to catch his breath and adjust the light rucksack on his back. The sun was almost at its zenith. Spock mentally calculated in which direction north lay, and altered his course slightly to match. It was a nice feeling to be out in fresh air, feeling the sun on his skin and the earth beneath his feet. He found his job with Starfleet to be most satisfactory, but some days he couldn't quite repress a fierce longing for real sunlight. He estimated this to be an inheritance from both his mother's and his father's side of the family - a combination of desert-dweller genes and an illogical human attachment to the intangible air of summer.

His body was quickly adapting to the terrain, and he discovered that rather than hindering any mental relaxation, his physical exertions actually made it easier to focus on the initial stages of meditation. Gradually, he shed his responsibilities and worries. He eliminated any disturbances from his mind as he had been taught, letting the here and now wash over him and suck him in with its multitude of sensations. His muscles shifting, straining in a simple rhythm. Warm air in his lungs. The faint smell of the sash-savas trees and salt, drifting up from the flatlands below. Dust in his nose. His even heartbeat.

When he finally reached the plateau, he was more at ease than he had been in months. Leaving his pack by the mouth of the path, he walked to the very edge of the cliff and settled in a cross-legged pose. The colony stretched out below him in a irregular patchwork of orange and green. It was an odd feeling, looking out over the collective remains of your race. Several thousand vulcans were many to walk amongst and speak to individually, but seen from up high, they seemed incredibly few and vulnerable. The capital city of Shi'Kahr on Vulcan had housed at least ten times this many, and it was one of over a dozen great cities. This was the only vulcan settlement, on any planet. It was a humbling thought.

Perhaps this insight had been the Ambassador's purpose in sending him here to meditate. An acknowledgment of what was, and what had passed. A sharing of the guilt. Even if he hadn't been intimately familiar with his own mind, Spock was sure he could have sensed the weight on the Ambassador's shoulders. The Ambassador's part in the events that brought about the destruction of Vulcan was dragging him down like a sack of stones.

The younger Spock felt it too, though not as keenly. An ancient culture had been almost completely annihilated in mere minutes, and every survivor of the genocide would carry the scars of that until their dying day. Some of their collective knowledge had been saved, but most of what had been Vulcan, in all senses of the word, had been irreplaceably lost. The shame he felt was by now almost familiar - what was he doing, exploring the universe? He belonged here. His people needed him.

Spock had seen his human shipmates stunned and terrified in the aftermath of Vulcan's destruction, but he had also seen them laughing - genuinely happy - only a few days afterwards, still reveling in their victory over Nero. At that moment, he had felt the full weight of what it meant to be a vulcan among humans. Humanity was resilient. How could Vulcan heal, when so many bonds had been brutally severed?

He wasn't surprised that Uhura had understood the significance of the severed bonds. He had explained some of the concept to her himself, after all, and she was remarkably clever and intuitive. She had been patient with him, and he, in turn, had tried his best to impart to her what he felt. A black hole beneath his shields. A void, calling out to be filled. Living, glowing bonds, cut and withered. A terrible, endless silence.

No, he had done his best, and Uhura had... understood.

Spock still wasn't completely sure that he did. Somehow their conversations had propelled them into an odd no-man's land of mutual respect, understanding and friendship, and Uhura had promptly moved out of his quarters. When she had tried to explain it to him, her initial arguments were based on emotion. It had been a profoundly odd monologue, fraught with helpless hand gestures and pregnant pauses. At some point, she had realized she wasn't getting through, and her brow had furrowed like it did when she was translating something particularly difficult.

"You studied biology on Vulcan," she'd said. "Sometimes, when a bone is broken, it grows together crooked. The only thing you can do to fix it is to re-break it and set it right."

"Perhaps your simile would be better suited to Doctor McCoy, Nyota," he offered. "I am afraid I cannot see the purpose of-"

She cut him off by brushing a quick kiss to his cheek. "Try, Spock. It's not that hard."

It depended on what she was referring to, he decided. Grasping her meaning was easy, as it usually was with Uhura, but sorting out the odd and conflicting emotions surrounding her? That had never been simple, and he found he didn't want to explore how the new development would affect his human side. Since Narada, he kept his shields as strong as he could possibly maintain them, fighting to keep the black hole at bay. Bits and pieces would trickle through while he slept, but for the most part, he went through the days without allowing anything to pass. The strain was incredible. His mental barriers eroded steadily, becoming paper thin from the constant onslaught.

On his ledge, Spock took a steadying breath. He couldn't maintain control indefinitely. He would have to tend to his wounds, lessen the pressure on his mental barriers. Sending a grateful thought in his older self's direction for the peaceful location, he took a last look at the fields below, and then directed his gaze inwards.

The upper layers of his mind were as he'd last seen them aboard the Enterprise. Calm and ordered as a rock garden. Unbroken lines of thought in fractal patterns. Usually, he would conduct his meditation at this level, where he retained complete control. He forces his fists to unclench and his muscles to relax as he slowly wound his way through the mindscape. As he ventured deeper, the serenity gradually vanished, and his rock garden became overgrown with wild vines. His human side, shooting up through the gravel as quick as he could repress it, threatening to make a forest of a desert. A stone chessboard was sheltered in the bough of a tree, and Spock wondered where it had sprung from. Engraved in the ground in constantly shifting letters were snatches of dialogue, and he recognized one of the fallen statues from the Katric Ark wound between two particularly thick vines.

He was no longer walking - walking required muscles, joints, substance. His mental shields were glowing before him, and he tentatively brushed against the shell separating himself from his emotions. With the mental equivalent of a deep breath, he lowered them slightly. What had been a faint electric hum through the shields became an ear-splitting roar, an all-powerful tidal wave that tore through his orderly mind, leaving destruction in its path. Spock was enveloped completely, sucked through his barriers on the backwash. It was bitterly cold, and for a moment he blacked out from the pressure.

When he came to, he immediately recognized the location. He'd been there before, many times - the core of himself, the axis from where everything sprung. The ashen remains of his bonds hung silently in the air, quivering and gray. Around him stretched the deep blue expanse of his Katra. Instinctively, he condensed his presence into a tiny ball, waiting for the inevitable blow as the loss of his people truly hit home. The black hole was still there, lurking behind every dead bond. The cold went straight through him, and as if from a great distance, he could sense his physical body shivering violently.

But the blow never came. After a great while, he gathered the courage to stretch out, to examine his surroundings further.

It was a forbidding place, a grave monument. Above him was nothing but endless space, the view from the observational deck of the Enterprise. Below and around him, his Katra was interwoven with his remaining bonds - the familiar steely silver of his father, the dark red link to Uhura, the fine connections of the elders. To his surprise, he noted a new bond - his own marine blue, interspersed with odd streaks of fiery golden. Ambassador Spock. He wondered what would have happened in his future to taint his Katra so. Perhaps the Kohlinar... He paused a moment by the bond to his mother, mourning the vibrant green that had been. No, he couldn't have undergone the Kohlinar. The Ambassador had mentioned that Amanda had lived to a ripe old age in his universe, and he was certain that he would never have been able to purge all emotions if she existed to be hurt by it.

Besides, his older self was as emotional a vulcan as he had ever met.

Bypassing other, fainter links, he came at last to a cluster of slender bonds to his fellow officers aboard the Enterprise. They were shallow, and hadn't yet assumed a particular color - still, they exuded a sense of stability and well-being. As if reacting to his presence, they glowed brighter, calling out to him. On an impulse, Spock reached out for the most eager one, touching it briefly with his thoughts. It wrapped itself around him, broadcasting acceptance, friendship and joy, joy, joy directly into his mind.

Spock instantly slammed up every shield he could muster.

He was flung back through his mental walls, and landed in what had been the wild garden, now a clean-swept grassy meadow. The barriers were back, but he could sense enough through them to know that the pain and despair had receded somewhat. His mother's bond, and the black hole calling out for a true mindlink, a bondmate, were still hovering in there, waiting, but he could control those. No, what terrified him were the clingy, overly emotional bonds of human friendship. He could easily block terror, pain and loneliness - he'd had decades of practice, after all. But how could he be expected to block something as genuinely warm as affection?

Spock pensively settled in the grass, watching the chains of thought rebuild themselves in the sky above. He was still shaking from the aftershock of the wave, and he didn't quite feel ready to return to reality yet. New Vulcan would be exactly the same as when he closed his eyes, a faint echo of what used to be his home. An unfamiliar planet. Perhaps he could grow to like it, though, if he gave it time... The sight of his ravaged katra had given him new fuel for thought. How much good could he do if he stayed on the planet? He knew that the Ambassador had been invaluable the the rebuilding. He was fully aware that most of this had been due to decades of experience, but surely his talents must have had some merits as well...

The only warning Spock got was a faint whoosh, then something glowing and fierce lunged at him from the other side of his shields. He spun, rolling himself upright. Mentally, he tensed, prepared for a second onslaught.

It came only seconds later, as an unfamiliar mental presence lashed out against him. Again, his shield held, but a shower of golden sparks trailed from the impact point. Spock didn't recognize the mind link.

That couldn't be good.

He'd never before heard of a bond acting in such a determined and sentient manner, and he felt an uncharacteristic stab of panic. Reaching out to his body, he determined that there was no-one within at least three hundred metes of his physical presence. For something to have enough raw psychic energy to bridge that gap by willpower alone, it would exude too much power for it to hide from the Vulcan explorers that determined whether the planet was safe for colonization. Something like that shouldn't exist on New Vulcan. It was logically impossible.

As in defiance of this thought, the presence slammed against the barriers again and again, colliding with ferocious determination.

It couldn't be an outside influence. That left only Spock's genes. There had been a lot of consternation when his psychic powers began to manifest. Surely, a half-human brain couldn't withstand the taxation of vulcan telepathy? It was true that he'd had to work much harder to achieve the same results as his classmates in meditation, but, as it turned out, Spock was fully capable of handling telepathy. Indeed, his hard work had given him an edge - he was familiar with the short cuts of the brain, the processes whereby you could achieve your goals with less raw power and more finesse. He'd been sure he was up to anything his mind could throw at him.

Apparently, his human genes had been biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment to trip his concentration and plunge him into madness.

He was finding it increasingly hard to focus on _shutting out emotion, shut it out, shut it out!_ because the link was not aggressive, violent or angry. It was emanating affection, comfort and warmth. It... wished to impart something to him. Spock wasn't sure how that thought filtered through the shield, but somehow, it was as clear as if it had been spoken.

The attacks were growing further apart, each impact with his shields weaker than the one that came before. Finally, the link gave in, hovering tiredly behind the opaque surface separating them. Its glow was dimmed. It reminded Spock of a wounded animal, too weak to go on fighting, and too stubborn to give up. Against all logic, he felt pity. Gently, he reached out, trying to assess if any permanent damage to his assailant had been done.

The instant he came into contact the the barrier, he realized he'd made a mistake. Quick as a thought, the bond smashed through the pity-weakened shield, latching on to his wrist. Spock's eyes widened. The bastard was _smug_. He could hear it rejoicing its victory, glowing in a throughly self-satisfied manner.

Spock pried at the bond, but to no avail. He'd already called up and lost his shields. It was any vulcan's worst nightmare. Trapped in his own head, completely at the mercy of some unknown presence. Realizing just how thoroughly he'd been beaten prompted a last, ditch effort at escape. Reaching forward into the recesses of his head, Spock threw himself at his bond with the Ambassador.

_Help me! Something has broached my mental shields_ - even as he broadcast, he knew the call wasn't reaching it's destination. Vulcan telepathy, excepting that between bondmates, required skin contact to work.

The bond around his wrist tightened slightly, and Spock knew that his body was hyperventilating.

_Ok, it's ok, sorry, won't hurt you, don't worry_, the bond projected. Spock stared at it in shock.

This was a _human_ bond.

To be precise, it was one of his. The eager one the had mauled him before. But that couldn't be - humans were psi-null, and he was pretty sure he would have noticed if he'd married one of them. Even Uhura, with whom he had a strong empathic connection, was a two-dimensional presence in his head. Without a bondmate's link, she could not feel him at all. Spock tentatively examined the presence wrapped around his arm, exhaling in relief.

It was an imprint. An idea of a personality, given sentience by the vibrant life force of the human it belonged to, as were all his human bonds. He'd never before heard of a bond with quite so much sentience, however. This bond was devious, determined, insufferable, and projecting warm feelings straight into his brain in a highly effective attempt to take out his shields.

Spock groaned. Kirk.

He had no words. How on earth did he manage to obtain the one captain in Starfleet whose mere _memory_ could do serious mental damage?

_Motherfucker_, the Kirk-bond supplied helpfully.

_Why me?_ Spock projected. _Get out of my head. Stop interfering. What do you want from me? Get. Out!_

The bond responded, not by releasing him, but with a series of images - a recent memory. Spock struggled to stem the tide, but the bond simply overrode his complaints.

Spock was forced to watch as Kirk sat on the edge of one the cots in sickbay, bickering with McCoy over Kirk's reluctance to return to Iowa and visit his mother. Spock saw himself, hands behind his back, eyebrow raised at the thoroughly illogical argument - McCoy had been, to use a human idiom, throwing rocks from a glass house. However, when McCoy had administered the required hyposprays to them both and retired, Spock had promptly overtaken McCoy's side of the argument.

"Going to Iowa would be pointless. My mom's busy anyway," Kirk had said, "and Sam's off planet doing the colonizing tango. Are you bored? Because if you have time, we could play a game of chess. I've been thinking about that trick you pulled last week..."

"Your mother would be _there_." Spock had pointed out.

Kirk had winced. "Sorry. Look, I know this is a touchy issue-"

"-and I am moved by your sympathies. However, I would prefer if you learned by my example instead of professing your pain on my behalf."

The Captain had slouched in his seat. "Of course. It's just - well, Riverside hasn't felt like home in a long time. Not since Sam left." He had given Spock a bleak look. "Now you're going to say I'm illogical, aren't you? I grew up there, and it's the last place I had a room that wasn't rented from Starfleet or courtesy of the Iowa state penitentiary. It's home, whether Sam's there or not."

Kirk's air of dejection was obvious, and when Spock spoke, his voice was a good deal gentler than he had anticipated. "On the contrary. Vulcans determine 'home' simply as the place that holds the most attraction to them. The place towards where their bonds call them."

"New Vulcan."

He had nodded. "For most, yes. That is where their families and bondmates are located. For those with bondmates or family stationed elsewhere, their bonds will call them to wherever that location might be. In your case, home might be where your brother is currently located."

"Well, that is quite a romantic notion." A genuine smile from the Captain, and Spock had raised an eyebrow in return. "That is - it's a very emotional definition of the word," Kirk amended. "Perhaps we humans have been a bad influence on you."

"It is the most logical definition of the word. Home implies comfort and rest. Vulcans experience both when our needs for telepathic contact are met."

He had looked at Spock with a shrewd glance that was somehow deeply unsettling. "Is New Vulcan home to you?"

"I cannot yet be certain, as I have never set foot on the planet."

"That's irrelevant, according to your explanation. Tell me, Spock, at this moment, in which direction are you being pulled?"

Spock had considered remaining silent, but it had, after all, been him who had broached the topic. The question was not unreasonable.

"New Vulcan," he had admitted. He'd grown considerably closer to his father over the last few weeks, as well as discovering an extraordinary - though hardly unexpected - affinity with the Ambassador. Those two bonds, added to the automatic strengthening of the ties between the remaining vulcans, had tipped the scales in favor of the unfamiliar planet. He'd neglected to mention the fact that his nascent ties to the Enterprise crew, his deepening connection to Uhura - even his respect for the Captain himself - put the statistical probability that the Enterprise could eventually become his Katric focus at well over 90%.

Kirk had given him a rueful grin. "Thanks, Spock. I know it can't be easy for you. It's just - you're a terrific First Officer. Thanks for staying. I'll see what I can do about getting you some shore leave on New Vulcan soon, shall I?" Kirk had cuffed Spock's shoulder good-naturedly, and set off for the bridge. Spock had stayed in his chair for a while, frozen. Kirk was being considerate. How perfectly curious.

Back in his mind, Spock felt the bond give his wrist a comforting squeeze, then release its hold. _Come home, Spock_, it said. T_his was never your planet. Don't you want to see what's on the other side of the known universe? I'll keep my distance, I promise. But don't stay here. That would be a terrible waste. There is so much to learn out there, so much to explore. You belong out there, amongst the stars. You told me you felt like you didn't fit in as a child - well, you fit in with us._

There was a terrible, tense moment, where Spock considered his options. Then he reached for the bond one last time. _I will go,_ he thought, and it had the ring of finality to it.

Turning, he left the inner reaches of his mind behind, and stretched for his physical body, the sunlight and the cliff.

As he left, the Kirk-link called out after him. _How long exactly do I have to keep my distance, then? _

_Spock?_


	7. Freedom

**A/N: I do not own Star Trek or Iowa. **

Freedom

When faced with obstacles, kids would nine times out of ten find a way to overcome them.

Well - ordinary kids would. Smart ones would just walk away.

Once in a while, however, you got a child smart enough to consider walking away, but too stubborn to actually do it. Those kids would typically find a way to _circumvent_ the obstacle, and then get on with their lives.

Jim Kirk, nine years old, had just discovered the first major obstacle of his life, and he had promptly beat a tactical retreat to his room. So far, he had formulated five plans to overcome that obstacle, nine to circumvent it, and one, Jim's personal favourite, that involved a lot of heat-seeking missiles and a very large crater.

The problem was, while all of them were masterpieces of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, none of them were the sort of plan that a regular, missile-less child would be able to execute.

Groaning, Jim rolled from his stomach (hand in chin, notebook before him, an excellent position in which to plot) onto his back. The irregular wooden floorboards dug into his shoulderblades a little, and he decided that the faint twinge of discomfort had _better_ develop into major inflamed wounds. Maybe, just maybe, if he died of gangrene and bloodloss, his mom would feel really guilty and realize what a terrible idea she'd had. Maybe she'd apologize, and feel bad about the direction things had taken. Then Jim would miraculously be revived, and they could all go out for ice-cream, Mom and Sam and Jim, the tree of them together, and all would be right with the world.

His world. This one. Earth.

He was willing to negotiate on that bit, though. Earth was nice, as far as planets went. It had trees, which were good for climbing, it had mud, which was good for sploshing, and it had chocolate, which was good for everything. However, Jim had learned for Saturday morning cartoons that other planets had robots and aliens. 'Alien' ranked just below 'ninjapirate' on Jim's list of awesome jobs, and if he got to practice being an alien for a bit around other aliens, he supposed it would be worth the temporary loss of mud and trees. He could find another home planet for a bit, and then, once he'd explored the universe, he'd be back on Earth for more chocolate. Preferably in time for supper.

What Jim most definately wasn't willing to negotiate was his family. Alright - Sam he would consider loaning out for short periods of time, particularly if he got something really cool in return, but he was pretty sure he'd want his brother back at some point. After all, that time Sam went on summer camp, Jim had missed him, and even written him a letter that seemed vaguely embarrasing now that Sam was around to tease him with it. But Mom? Nope, Jim wouldn't even dream of loaning her out. Not for a moment.

So why was she so intent on leaving Earth without him and Sam?

A series of loud thuds perforated the silence. There was a brief lull, and then a particularly loud 'wham!' from somewhere to Jim's right. Jim held his breath. Sam had stayed to talk with Mom after Jim had stormed off in a huff to plot. He didn't believe that Sam would actually be able to change her mind, but on the off chance, he kept quiet. Longer, softer footsteps, going up the stairs, following Sam, telling him it would all be all right... But there was no-one coming, no sound at all. Sam was hiding in the bathroom, because Jim had beaten him to their shared bedroom, and Mom wasn't coming after him.

Jim sighed. It had been a terrible year, and it had all the earmarks of getting worse. Mom hadn't clammed up so much when he was smaller, but for every passing year, the look in her eyes got more and more misty, like she was somewhere far away. He wasn't sure how much he could trust Sam on the issue, since Sam claimed that everything from torn jeans to rainy Sundays was Jim's fault, but Sam had said that it happened mostly when Jim was around. One moment, normal, happy Mom, then she'd see Jim, and her face would go all - blank. Like something inside her had gotten up and left. It happened close to three times a day now, more if he didn't put an effort into keeping out of her way.

Apparently, those efforts hadn't been good enough. There was something wrong with him, bad enough to make Mom want to go into space to avoid him. He'd asked her about that once, why she only got distant around him. She'd gathered him up in her arms, kissed his forehead, and murmured "Oh, sweetheart. It's nothing to do with you, nothing at all."

And then she'd gone misty. Jim had a pretty good grasp of causality for his age, and he didn't ask her again.

So, the problem, best as he could formulate it, was this: Mom was going to meet aliens and robots, and she was not bringing Jim, specifically. Jim didn't mind aliens and robots, but wanted to be with Mom and Sam. Sam wanted to be with Mom (and Jim, he hoped), but didn't want to leave Iowa. The best plan Jim could come up with in response to that was that they all move to Minnesota, which was closer than the Moon, but further away than the ditch way down past farmer Jensen's place. Mom and Sam could live together, and Jim could live in a treehouse in the back yard. Jim drew the details of his plan below the others for posterity, then frowned at his pad, unsatisfied.

A deep down part of him blinked sleepily, then stretched in newfound awareness. Minnesota might be far enough for Mom and Sam, but he wasn't all that sure it would be for him. Not anymore. Jim had always wanted to go off-planet someday. Now that Mom had decided to aid in the colonization of a new planet for close to a year, and not bring him or Sam, the desire seemed a bit more urgent. He wanted to leave _now_. Yesterday, Iowa had covered all of existence like a particularly spectacular wall-to-wall carpet. Today, Jim had noticed the walls. Living in a flat, grassy state only served to draw more attention to the horizon, and above it, the sky. It was going to be a very long year.

Rolling back onto his stomach, Jim allowed himself to sob quietly for five minutes before getting back to plotting.

Jim's prediction turned out to be correct - the year dragged on, and on, and on. He had odd fits of claustrophobia where the walls would close in on him and he couldn't seem to breathe. As a result, he cut school frequently to avoid the small, stifling classroom. His uncle Frank looked after Sam and himself, insomuch as you could call 'shouted orders and otherwise avoided' looking after, and Jim very quickly found himself spending more and more time _out_. Not necessarily outside, even though that was a safe bet when he was having a claustrophobic day, just away from home. He could walk into town in about twenty minutes, and three weeks after Frank had moved in, Jim had a drawn himself map of every street, shortcut and good climbing tree in Riverside. It took him two further days to discover the town library, and after that his explorations aprubtly seized.

Maybe Jim couldn't get off Earth physically, but he was having a good shot at getting away mentally. In less than a year, Jim had made his way through every sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and suspense novel on the shelves, two-thirds of the books on geography and travel litterature (on-and off-world) and half a romance novel. The library wasn't very big, but he still considered this an impressive feat. When the supply of fresh, intriguing books grew thin, Jim started spending more time outdoors. His town map (carefully hidden beneath a loose floorboard when not in use) grew rapidly to encompass the surrounding meadows and fields. There were several large silos near Riverside, as well as a decomissioned shuttle construction yard, and both of these turned into all-day field trips.

Sam and Jim would occasionally get letters from far-off planets, mostly concerning new, important problems with colonization. Winona Kirk was needed, and she wasn't about to let the colonists down. They could understand that, couldn't they?

Jim settled into a routine. He would get up in the morning, and start walking. When he found something new, he'd pen it into his map or notebook. As time passed, it took longer and longer to find things that were genuinely new, not to mention interesting, and each walk to the current edge of his map took longer than the day before. Jim started to get tense and irritable, and the claustrophobia attacks increased in frequency. Things were reaching boiling point a long time before the inevitable confrontation, and to be honest, he wasn't quite sure afterwards how on Earth he'd managed to delude himself for so long that he was coping just fine.

One morning in June, Sam, not Jim, left. Sam, who loved Iowa. Sam, who was born with Riverside soil under his fingernails. Jim was too numb to plead with him, too numb to beg Sam to bring him with him. How could this be happening?

When ordered to wash the car, Jim went. The keys were still in the ignition.

Later, Jim wouldn't remember much of his first time driving. He'd fill in the blanks according to his mood - he'd wanted to see the white spaces at the edge of his map for himself, he'd wanted to get back at his uncle, he'd just wanted the thrill of the chase because he was James T. Kirk, dammit, and sometimes James T. Kirk did stupid things for no apparent reason.

He did get one thing out of it, besides a handful of scrapes and a mark on his juvenile record. He discovered adrenaline.

Adrenaline would shut out everything. It was better than a book, or a map, in that he never actually went anywhere. It just made him blind to everything but his own body, where he was and what he was doing right now. Escapism for the opportunity-challenged. Adrenaline was very easy to come by. Fixing up a rusty motorcycle (with the help a dozen book on mechanics from the library) was an absorbing project, and as it turned out, also a marketable skill. Jim discovered motorcycle-racing shortly thereafter. Later came barfights, advanced mathematical problem-solving and sex. Lots and lots of sex.

He'd didn't need to go off-world anymore, and he was fairly sure he didn't want to, either. Space was a black, sucking void that ate mothers, fathers and brothers, and left their ghosts resting in your bones. At sixteen, he'd stumbled upon an old photo of his father and abruptly realized why his growing up had caused Winona (Mom! insisted a part of him. She's still Mom.) to lose her grasp on reality. At seven, he'd been his father's son. At sixteen, he was closer to being a young clone of George Kirk.

Jim had stashed the photo away under the floorboard too. His father had not only managed to get himself killed, he'd torn apart Jim's family with his memory, and effectively destroyed any chance for Jim to anything other than 'George Kirk's son, the one who didn't turn out quite so well'. He hated that he owed his father a debt of gratitude. He hated that even though he'd never met the man, he would still, occasionally imagine what he was like. George was never, ever, anything but a hero and a good man. Even in Jim's head. He tried to avoid his father's memory as much as possible. Dwelling on the cloying resentment and yearning tended to lead to Jim waking up in a bed he didn't recognize, with enough alcohol in his blood that it could be used as antifreeze.

Then he met Christopher Pike, and for the second time in his life, things reached a point where they boiled over.

It was like someone was simultanteously fast-forwarding and rewinding his life. He was a little boy again, dreaming of a starship and some unknown destination at the far end of the universe. His father was watching over his shoulder as always, but it was less claustrophobic when he had a clear goal in mind. For the first time in his life, he was walking forwards and away, instead of looping around in the same old circles.

Bones and Nero, Uhura, Spock and the Enterprise herself. Jim's life, which had been something small and constrained suddenly felt full to the breaking point. There weren't enough hours in a day in which to run a starship, and he worked himself to the limit. In the engine room, with Scotty and his endless stream of improvements. In the science labs, trying to coordinate teams, shifts and away missions. On the bridge, flickering between diplomacy, paperwork, and the most accelerated course in leadership ever taken.

Things just blurred past, and when he retired to his quarters for the night, he was asleep within minutes. The away-missions and occasional alarms played merry hell with his natural sleep cycles, and after two months, dark circles around his eyes were showing up with alarming frequency. Bones remarked upon it, and Jim waved him off.

Then came Betel Epsilon II. As Jim frequently told his ensigns, away-missions were dangerous, unweildy things, and if you weren't attentive and hadn't listened to Uhura's cultural brief on Things Not To Say To The Natives, they tended to end badly. Jim still felt like everything was happening too fast, and he'd really meant to get some sleep when he had time.

The speeding screeched to a grinding halt when he got shot.

One moment, there had been a rocky mountainside, and then next, his conciousness was narrowed to the arrow sticking out just below his ribs.

_Ah, shit,_ he thought. _Well, that's a bit of an anticlimax after almost getting sucked into a black hole._

He decided he must have passed out then, because the next thing he could remember was being carried, _carried!_ along by his vulcan First Officer. He could feel the air being sucked into his lungs in heaving mouthfuls as though from outside his body. His abdomen was uncomfortably warm, and whenever Spock jostled him even a little, it felt like someone had taken a switchblade to his solar plexus.

"Wha'ppened?" he managed to gasp.

Spock looked down at him, his eyes completely black, and Jim could feel the tension reverberating through his body. Like a spring, pressed down until it could go no further, ready to unfurl. Fuck, Jim hadn't seen him that angry for a long time. Not since Nero.

He and Spock had been able to work together fairly well since the Narada, and Jim had come to respect his First. Jim thought they'd been doing alright. Nothing like what the elder Spock had told him about, but alright. Still, Spock rarely gave any indication of what was going on in his head. For all Jim knew, Spock had spent the past months in contemplation of the perfect murder.

"Any attempts at communication in your state would be inadvisable, Captain." Spock said.

"Wha'bout the others?"

Spock fixed his gaze on a point further along the hallway. "The rest of the landing party are unharmed. It would seem that your attacker was attempting to scare us off, rather than force us into a military confrontation."

"Spock-"

"You will _not attempt to speak_."

Jim wondered how it was that he was being dragged to sickbay by the one officer on the ship who, by the looks of it, would much rather he bled out painfully whilst immersed in lava. Spock was even paler than usual, save for faint splotches of green on his cheeks and ears.

A slight break in Spock's step, and Jim winced.

"You should have notified me you had not completed your sleep cycle last night," Spock got out past gritted teeth. "You should not, under any circumstances, have beamed down with the landing party. It was highly irresponsible-"

A security officer appeared from one of the adjoining hallways, and Spock immediately clammed up, swallowing the rest of his sentence. Jim appreciated the gesture. Then, the officer (Márquez? Crossley?) rushed over to Spock, needlessly hefting Jim's legs into his own arms. Spock remained silent the rest of the way to sickbay.

Bones was at his desk, eating an apple, when they limped in. Plastering a smile upon his face, Jim dragged out a bit of his remaining strength. Bones had warned him about this sort of thing. Jim couldn't face showing up in sickbay, bleeding, defeated and _wrong_, on top of everything else.

"Bones! Tell Spock I'm alright, will you? He's been bitching at me since we beamed back, and -"

Spock lowered Jim onto one of the medical cots with such care that Jim was momentarily silenced. Then, Jim's tensed-spring First was back, settling into his usual posture.

"I do not _bitch_, Captain. Ignoring Starfleet protocol to beam down with the landing party is illogical and hazardous."

Bones collected a handful of gear from a nearby table, and promptly stabbed Jim in the neck with a hypospray. The faint, familiar pain was almost welcome.

"Dammit, Jim," Bones muttered softly, and Jim could hear the quiet buzz of a tricorder being swept over his body. Already he could feel the effects of the injected anaesthesiac. He smelled something sharp and chemical, and things began to unravel at the edges. He was looking at the world through a microscope that'd been twisted out of focus.

Spock had stopped talking. Idly, Jim noticed that his hands were clenched tightly enough to paint the knuckles olive.

"Will the Captain recover?" asked Spock.

Bones made a noncommittal noise. "He's lost a lot of blood, but unless the bastards got lucky and hit something vital, it shouldn't be permanent. Goddamn-"

Jim was out cold before he could discover the end of that sentence.

When he woke, his first thought was that someone had left an anvil on his chest. For a few horrid seconds, he couldn't breathe at all. Opening his eyes to a semi-dark room, he managed to force air into his lungs in a series of painful gulps. Jim tenatively ran his hands down across his torso, discovering the tight bandages encircling his midsection. Oh. Not an anvil. He pushed the blanket draped over him off his upper body to get a better view of the damage. The bandages were clean and white, with no tell-tale bloodstains, but he didn't believe Bones would permit such a thing in his sickbay, either. A thick cotton pad of about five times five inches was held tightly in place by the bandages, above and to the left of his belly button. That was hardly a good sign - his arrow wound had been deep enough to cause internal damage. The dermal regenerator only worked for shallow wounds. Anything beyond that required bioglue and time to heal.

Well, crap. Apparently, he wouldn't be doing any captaining for the next few days. He was already bored.

Carefully, Jim wiggled into a more upright position. The other beds were empty, and except for the muted hum of various apparatuses, the room was quiet.

"Bones!" Jim hollered.

His friend appeared - and Jim must still have been on some sort of meds, because even Spock couldn't move that fast. Before Jim had time to protest, Bones had him flat on his back, and was examining his wound with a clinical expression.

Well, _Bones_' clinical expression, anyway. Narrowed eyes, staring down the bandages like they were cheating him at poker.

Jim cleared his throat. "Hey." It sounded rough and gravelly, even to himself. A glass of water was pushed into his hand without Bones even breaking his stride, and Jim gulped it down gratefully.

"How long have I been out?"

"Two days." Bones replied.

Jim let out an exasperated groan. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

Bones gave his ribs a final poke, and satisfied, leaned forward to focus all his narrow-eyed disapproval at Jim. "Listen to me Jim, and listen carefully - I don't know what game you and the hobgoblin are playing, but he's right."

Jim blinked in surprise. Bones agreed with Spock on something. The apocalypse was imminent. "I'll tell him you said that," he said after a beat.

The doctor wasn't even fazed. "I'd tell him myself if it thought it'd make a difference. At the rate you're burning yourself out, you'll be held together by nought but bioglue and determination by next Tuesday. What the hell do you think you're doing? Beaming down with every landing party, 'I don't need rest', my arse -"

"Spock goes on every away mission as well," Jim interjected.

"Spock doesn't need sleep! He's probably got liquid caffeine stashed somewhere in the computer he calls a body." Bones sighed. "Doesn't need sleep in the way you do, anyway. You're as human as anyone else, Jim. And you can boss the crew around all you want, but goddamn it, I'm your doctor. If you continue to make my job impossible, I'll suspend you."

This wasn't a new threat, as far as Bones was concerned. He'd made it at least three times a week since Jim had been promoted to captain. This time, however, there was no overtones of exasperation or teasing in Bones' voice, just a weary sadness. Jim wasn't certain that Bones could pull off declaring the captain unfit for duty without anyone signing off on it, but he was absolutely convinced that his friend would give it the best shot he had. The kicker was, Spock would probably back him up on it. And if the First Officer and the CMO agreed...

"You can't - there is too much - I can handle it, really, I can. You know I'd drive you crazy trapped in here." Jim flashed him his best grin, trying to salvage the babbling slew of arguments.

Bones ignored him, and fished out his beeping commlink. "Oh, for crying - bunch of incompetent, pencilpushing, turkeybrained - I'll be back in a bit." He gave Jim's blanket a pat, and hesitated for a moment. He had that expression on his face people got when they were trying to choose between a slew of possible things to say. Jim had read enough to know that this was where the protagonist's friend would say something reassuring, like - 'You'll be up and about before you know it.' or 'Try and get some sleep, you'll feel better tomorrow.'

What Bones actually said was; "If you leave, I'll sedate you and drag you back by your ankles."

Jim rolled his eyes. "If you want to chain me to the bed, all you have to do is ask."

Bones winced. "You know, whiskey isn't as effecive a brain bleach as you think," he informed Jim. The doctor stood, and picked his way across the room.

"Hey!" Jim shouted after him. "If I find some way to implant Spock's expresso chromosome, can I go?"

Bones punched the button for the door with a vengeance, then turned around to face his patient. "Jim - why you _think_ the hobgoblin goes on all the away missions?"

Even with Bones' parting shot to mull over, Jim was back to mind-boggling boredom within minutes. He considered making a jailbreak for his quarters and then the bridge, but the threat of suspension was still fresh in his mind. A formal process that could take weeks to repudiate was not worth the price of an afternoon of freedom. Sleep was out of the question - he'd slept for two whole days, and his body was used to four-hour naps. So instead of rolling over and trying to doze, he began systematically investigating his environment.

He'd rifled through all the cupboards and medkits for tools, and had set to work trying to manually override the lock on Bones' office so he could get to his computer, when the sickbay doors swished open. Quickly, Jim shoved his impromptu toolkit under a chest of drawers, and put his hands behind his back. 'I didn't do it' said his facial features.

"I was just wondering where you'd put the water - oh." Jim relaxed a bit. "Hi, Spock."

His First looked distinctly uncomfortable, though a bit better than Jim remembered him from yesterday. His skin was back to its normal level of pale, and he was wearing a crisply ironed uniform and a carefully blank expression. He moved as though he was anictipating another attack - wary, curt movements, dark eyes sweeping the room. In his hand was an old, battered book.

Spock gave Jim a formal nod of his head. "Captain."

Jim quickly crossed the floor and collapsed on his bed in case Bones returned.

"Liutenant Sulu asked me to bring you this. He said that you are welcome to borrow it," said Spock and laid the book on Jim's bedside table. It was The Three Musketeers. Jim grinned. When drunk, the pilot had once quoted the book at earsplitting volume, demonstrating his fencing technique with a punch ladle. He wasn't surprised, though the gesture touched him.

"That's nice of him. I haven't read this in years." Jim picked up the book and turned it over in his hands.

"Indeed," said Spock.

"Erm... Would you like to sit down or something?"

"Negative. That will not be necessary." Spock was hovering uncomfortably near the foot of the bed, his hands stashed behind his back. He was deliberately avoiding looking at Jim.

"Spock, if there is something you'd like to talk about-"

It was like opening the lid of a shaken can of soda.

A deep breath was all the warning Jim got before Spock was off.

"There is always danger inherent in beaming down to an unknown planet and such a risk is unwarranted for the Captain when it is a minor exploratory mission. As the serving Science Officer aboard this vessel, I was obliged to supervise the mission, and my rank of First Officer rendered it both unnecessary and extraordinarily ill advised for you to hazard yourself in this manner. If, by chance, the mission had been the victim of a full-scale attack, the Enterprise would not have any personnel available capable of functioning as Acting Captain for an extended period of time. I must request that you refrain from doing so again without express reason."

Jim gave himself a moment to mentally sort through the diatribe before replying. When he did, his voice was cold. "No. No way in hell. I'm not going to be one of those captains who just sit around, sending their men into danger, taking all the credit and none of the risks."

"That is not what I am suggesting. I am suggesting you refrain from adding to those risks."

Spock was still as a staue, and Jim found all the frustration, fear and exhaustion of the past months bubble up within him. It was easy for Spock to be logical. All he cared about was the data. For him, losing a crewmember was a regrettable event, to be avoided if possible. He didn't have to contend with the guilt, or the nightmares. Jim knew he was being unfair, but it was Spock's fault he was trapped in sickbay, Spock's fault he couldn't take care of his ship.

"Yeah? Well that's what it sounds like from over here. You _always_ beam down, _always_, and Bones isn't halfway down your freaking throat. I don't know if you think I'm incompetent or just plain stupid, but I can take care of myself, _Officer_."

Spock took an invlountary step forwards, and a small, detatched part of Jim's brain wondered if he'd decided to finish the job he'd started after Delta Vega.

"You would not permit this sort of behaviour from anyone else in the crew." Despite the fact that his eyes were blazing, Spock's voice was flat, like he was reading an itinerary of spare parts. "You hardly sleep. You rush into situations. You run everyone's risks for them. You have been injured over five times more than the second-most unfortunate crewmember, and yet you persist with your illogical behaviour-"

"Dismissed." Jim cut him off.

Spock straightened himself. "I will not leave."

"Well, I can't. _Dismissed_."

Jim met Spock's eyes, and it was like pushing against a physical weight. He wondered if Spock's emotions, unable to break through his mask of a face, were concentrated into actual energy behind the eyes. Biting his teeth together, he held the gaze.

After a few moments, Spock looked down, the anger bleeding from his posture. When he spoke, Jim could hardly reconcile the quiet question with the whip-cord sentences that had precededed it.

"Why do you persist in doing this?"

_I don't know_, Jim thought. _I want to protect my crew, but I know you do too. I haven't needed the adrenaline - not for weeks. Why did I drive the car over the edge of the cliff?_

Freedom, perhaps - the ultimate defiance of expectations. But defying expectations was a very narrow sort of freedom indeed. Jim had been struggling to free himself from his father's spectre for so long, he'd failed to realize that he'd bound himself as effectively as if he'd simply caved to the expectations. By being constantly contrary, he'd limited his options to the opposite of whatever was expected.

They'd told him to behave, to be a good boy, to take care of himself and value the life his father's sacrifice had bought. He'd driven a car over a cliff.

They'd told him he couldn't do better than his father. He'd saved earth.

He shrugged, and Spock inched a little closer, looking throughly apprehensive about doing so. "I - Jim, I know you enjoy the - thrill. But getting yourself killed will not accomplish anything."

The last comment rankled a little, and Jim answered stiffly. "I'll take your concerns under advisement."

"I do not have any issues to discuss with the Captain. He is an adequate officer. It is my friend I am worried about."

Jim froze. "Spock."

"I believe that Ensign Chekov could use my assistance on the bridge. We are approaching the Oisín nebula, and-"

Jim's hand shot out to catch Spock's wrist. "Don't you dare. I can't believe you said that, but I'm not going to let you pretend you didn't."

"That would be illogical," Spock conceded.

Awkward silence stretched between the two. Spock cleared his throat. Jim dropped Spock's arm like a hot potato.

"So..." Jim said. "Friends."

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"You know what would be really good right now? A friendly distraction. Apparently, I'm going to be stuck here for a day or two, so I should probably ration out Sulu's book. I mean, I wouldn't want to go stir-crazy and run off to help Scotty in Engineering, or anything like that." Puppy eyes had always come naturally to Jim.

Spock opened his mouth, doubtlessly to be acerbic, then closed it again. "I presume you are familliar with the terran game of 'chess'?" he finally asked.

Jim grinned. Expectations be damned - this felt _right_.

"Teach me," he said.

**This is the last chapter of Perspective. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and commented - I hope you enjoyed it. If you have time, I'd really appreciate feedback, so I can make my next story better than this one (whenever I get around to writing it). I appreciate your sticking with this :D**


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